Sometimes when I read the comments section on sites and blogs, I could only nod my head in disappointment. It's tough to find a truly civil intellectual environment offering stimulating conversation in life let alone the internet.
It seems no one can write anything without being besmirched by ad hominen attacks. No matter how reasoned or eloquently presented, a point of view is bound to incite angry, sarcastic remarks.
The trick to reading other opinions is to allow for it to flow from your skin. Most responses I see have less to do with the content and more with the fact it contradicts a persons prevailing belief or perception.
How many times I've seen people blast the writer not on the merit of the argument presented but on the writer themselves.
It's a shame.
Which got me thinking. What if Aristotle, Socrates, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Bacon, Machiavelli, Pascal, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hobbes, Vico, Diderot, Paine, W. James, A. Smith, Pareto, Humes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mill, Kant, Gibbon, Hegel, Jung, Schopenhauer, von Clausewitz, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Popper, Friedman and so on maintained their own personal blogs?
Ooo, would it make for lively discussion and debate or what?
My money would be on Darwin, Machiavelli and Hegel for most popular (if not wacky in the case of Hegel) blogs on the net.
My money would be on Aristotle, Socrates, Darwin, Einstein, Nietzsche.
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